Divine Youth: Class, Escape and Self-Invention
A screening of Elliott Flanagan's short film, followed by a conversation exploring working-class youth culture, masculinity, package holidays, escape, memory and self-invention. Growing from Elliott's experiences of Club 18-30 as both holidaymaker and rep, Divine Youth looks at the resort as a temporary space in which identity, aspiration and belonging can be performed and remade.A piece of something bigger (2018) Video - 7m 20s A piece of something bigger explores masculinity and male relationships through the prism of package holiday culture. Flanagan unpicks entrenched stereotypes that saturated his youth - misunderstood boys under pressure to conform and perform. He studies a tension from his own experience between one's own consciousness and societal expectations. Traditional ideas of masculinity and its lack of complexity is subverted, as the viewer is party to glimpses of real honesty in the chaos. With music by William Brown and Ashley Snook.